


On the Immortality of Letters

by freyjawriter24, lordvoldemortsnipple



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: (this demon and self sabotage...why does this keep happening? dramatic and comedic purposes mostly), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Disaster Crowley (Good Omens), M/M, Misunderstandings, Modern Era, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), POV Crowley (Good Omens), Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Pre-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Scene: St James's Park 1862 (Good Omens), crowley crowleys himself, evil always contains the seeds of its own destruction, prompt: lost and found
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26729779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freyjawriter24/pseuds/freyjawriter24, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordvoldemortsnipple/pseuds/lordvoldemortsnipple
Summary: When a letter goes missing in the 1800s, it stands to reason that it’s lost forever. And that’s probably for the best.But a century and a half and a failed Apocalypse later, a museum visit proves that some things are meant to be found.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 25
Kudos: 59
Collections: GO-Events POV Pairs Works





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [GO-Events](https://go-events.tumblr.com/) POV Pairs event, using the prompt 'lost and found'.
> 
> Crowley’s POV is written by [lordvoldemortsnipple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordvoldemortsnipple/) and Aziraphale’s POV is written by [freyjawriter24](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freyjawriter24).

"A letter always seemed to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend." Emily Dickinson

  


There’s a part of planning to stop an Apocalypse that involves something resembling hope, where one with enough imagination can conceptualize an after. Crowley has always been a very imaginative demon, and so for him it came easy, the passing thoughts of dining at the Ritz, of visiting a bookshop without pretense, and very occasionally, not often at all, of a small cottage filled with books, surrounded by a flourishing garden. His recent unemployment hasn’t curbed the habit, and with the lack of new job prospers, Crowley finds himself with more time to dwell on the possible scenarios. 

For all his time and imagination, Crowley hadn’t pictured he’d use his newfound freedom to willingly visit an exhibition on Victorians and the Romantics, and yet.

“Oh! Crowley, look!” Aziraphale touches his elbow fleetingly, featherlike, and points to a set of a living room built a few feet away, made of uncomfortable pale couches and enormous vases. “I had those curtains by my desk, didn’t it look lovely?” 

Crowley lowers his glasses to squint his eyes at the horrid curtains, a beige cloth with a pattern of little red flowers that seem like a valid argument for the end of humanity. “Don’t remember those.”

“Ah, of course not.” Aziraphale looks at him from the corner of his eye, mouth curling upwards. “I had them while you took your little century long angry nap.”

“It was not— oh, shut up!” Crowley shoves the glasses back up his nose, and looks away both from Aziraphale and the ugly curtains.

“Whatever you wish to call it, then,” Aziraphale’s eyes have just enough of a glint to them. “A petulance induced coma, perhaps?”

“ _A petulance induced—_ no, it was a, a, you know, a holiday.” 

“I see,” Aziraphale says with a smile. “Well, I’m glad you eventually returned from Dreamland. Now let’s see if the curtains have a number? I do want to hear what the guide has to say for it.”

“Yeah, but you can’t ever say _dreamland_ again,” Crowley tries to batter, but it’s a moot point, as they’re already walking towards the set. 

There’s a placard beside it with the symbol of the audio guide and a number on it, presumably for the entire set. Azirpahale looks at it, and then at Crowley, grabbing the audio guide hanging from his own neck and holding it out towards the demon.

“You know you can just tell it to work,” Crowley says, far too close as he punches numbers into Aziraphale’s device.

Aziraphale answers distractedly, busy as he struggles with fixing the headphones on his ears. “It’s just not the same.”

“Yeah, yeah. There.” Crowley drops the guide, watches it bump against Aziraphale’s chest. “Gonna take a look around.”

“You don’t want to listen as well?” Aziraphale looks at him, expectantly, his white hair curling around the enormous headphones.

“I’m good,” Crowley says, glancing one more time at the curtains and regretting it. He doesn’t particularly care to hear more about them. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

Aziraphale nods, pressing the headphone close to his ear as he starts to listen in, and with that out of the way, Crowley steps back. He shoves his right hand on the pocket of his trousers, taking a vacant look at the furniture he passes by as he walks around the room. 

He had wondered why Aziraphale had invited him to this particular exhibition, and now he knows there are two clear reasons: Aziraphale needs someone to help with the audio guide, and a demon in particular to bully over their disagreement during this particular time period. Not like it had been Crowley’s fault Azirpahale misunderstood what he wanted from that meeting, but apparently _coincidently_ sleeping a century away had revoked his rights on high ground on the matter. 

It doesn’t mean, of course, that Aziraphale is the only one allowed to have fun here.

Crowley moves a little closer to a large glass display, this with an assortment of soap labels pressed open, where several people gather, putting in numbers on their audio guides or holding their headphones against their heads to better listen to it. He glances at the faded labels, then at the people, and snaps his fingers quietly before moving away, just enough so he can still listen. 

A man jumps backwards, headphones falling, hitting the glass display, his knees, and then the floor, unplugging from the audio guide, stopping the loud blast of sound that had so suddenly started pouring out of it. Some people startle at the commotion, but most seem busy dealing with their own guides.

"I don't understand, it glitched, I guess," someone says, as Crowley passes by to admire an intricate desk on an office set display that would go very well with his throne. "It's stuck on German, I can't change it back to English."

"Mine's in Russian, I think," their companion answers.

The desk in question is made of dark wood, clearly well made, but it would clash with the rest of his flat, so Crowley moves on. Aziraphale, at a quick glance, is still admiring the curtains, so Crowley keeps moving between displays, glancing around and not feeling too sorry for having slept over their time. Doesn't seem like he missed much, and certainly not anything important.

He's caught a little on a bed frame that wouldn't look bad in his bedroom, and is considering the potential of finding it there when he gets back home, when he notices the set a little to the left, composed of high shelves filled with books. There's a small writing desk, made of pale wood, with papers and a dipping pen resting on top. 

On the wall, next to where the shelves are resting, there's a page in a glass display. Beside it, painted directly on the wall, there’s text written in a large font, but not big enough for Crowley to read at a distance. His interest piqued, and curious to see if anything in that display could find its way to Aziraphale's bookshop, Crowley moves closer, slowing his step when he's close enough to actually read the large font in display.

“I forced myself to believe that nothing between us would ever change, since I know we cannot have what I most truly, deeply desire; and so I resolved to say nothing, so as to avoid disturbing the gentle waters of our interactions.”

— Excerpt from letter between lovers, circa 1860s 

Well, that’s disappointing. Crowley had been expecting it to be a draft for a book, or a letter from some of those writers Aziraphale likes to go on about. Instead is just the work of some sad sap moping after someone. 

Crowley is unfortunately familiar with the concept of a sad sap moping after someone, and not keen on seeing more records of said experience. And yet Aziraphale has a particular interest in such stories, so Crowley might as well check if the poor sod's letter has the necessary amount of yearning for Aziraphale to do his pleased wiggle when he reads it. 

He lowers his glasses a bit, squinting them as he clasps his hands behind his back, bending forward at the waist to lean closer to the letter displayed behind the glass frame.

I hope the sentiments herein contained are, if not expected, at the very least not a surprise to you. I myself suspect they are returned in kind, and would like, if you would find it amenable and not too dangerous, to perhaps work towards acting on them. But I am getting ahead of myself – let me first state plainly, without hiding behind layers of meaning or trusting you to correctly interpret veiled words, what I mean by this letter.

Crowley's mouth slacks open, and he takes a step forward, shoving his glasses up on his forehead, sticking it into his hair. He knows this handwriting, he has a small stack of pages written with the same strike of the l, the same curl on the y, with the same carefully measured calligraphy. He keeps them hidden away in a box, inside a safe, behind a portrait, to spare himself of the temptation of getting lost in re-reading old correspondence and looking for hidden messages. He knows very well the sap who wrote this letter.

His eyes drop fast to the bottom of the letter, where it finishes with a Forever yours, A, confirming it with the loop of the A. It’s with apprehension he looks back up, at the beginning of the letter, and as he reads the salutation the imagination he’s held back over the centuries, the something like hope he’s been nursing for the past decade, stops still. 

He knows very well every name Aziraphale attributes to him. He was once _Crawley_ and _foul fiend_. He’s usually _Crowley_ or _old serpent_. Sometimes he’s _dear_ , and rarely, too infrequent for him to see it coming, he can be _my dear boy_. 

My Dearest One, it reads in a way Aziraphale never spoke, not to him, and Crowley drags his eyes away, to the little headset symbol next to the glass case, pulling his own headphones up. 

Last they met in 1862 Aziraphale did say he had others to fraternize with, he recalls as he punches the number on his audio guide. So maybe one of them, in those years while Crowley was off being a tourist in _Dreamland_ — maybe the guide can give him some answers without having to hear it from the angel himself. It’s with a sinking feeling in his stomach that he presses the headphone to a ear and starts listening:

"...carta, encontrada dentro da escrivaninha exposta no cenário acompanhante em 1905, foi presumidamente... " the audioguide tunes in, unhelpful.

He picks up the machine hanging from his neck, checking the settings, it’s supposed to be in English, it says its in English, so why isn’t it working?

"...a situação entre estes amantes desafortunados aparenta uma impossibilidade social..." the audioguide continues, working as intended.

It sounds like the Russian and Spanish languages had a baby, so it’s probably Portuguese, but what does he know, he hasn’t been in the country in centuries. He can barely pick at the language, the guide is now mentioning… foi cortado acordo, someone cut a deal? He clearly doesn’t know Portuguese anymore. 

“Come on, no hablo- no parlo? No falo- just work!” Crowley digs his finger hard into the appropriate button on the guide, hammering it into it a few times to no effect. He changes tactics, pointing a menacing finger at it. “You listen to me very carefully. If you don’t start working in English in the next three seconds I will crack you open and turn you into a calcul—”

“Is yours not working either?”

He doesn’t jump, but his hands move quickly upwards as if he had, both towards his head, one shoving his glasses back to the bridge of his nose, the other pulling down the headset so it hangs on the back of his neck. “Aziraphale, you, uh, done with the curtains, then?”

The angel links his fingers over his belly. “Not entirely, but my guide stopped working properly. As did every other in the room. You wouldn’t know anything about it, would you?”

"...o uso de metáforas religiosas é recorrente, desde o purgatório à... " comes from the audioguide speakers hanging from his neck, almost too silent to be heard.

“Mine’s not working right,” Crowley replies, glancing at the letter, and then back at Aziraphale. “Funny that. Who could have seen that coming?”

“Who indeed,” Aziraphale gives him that smile that means he knows very well what happened. Crowley enjoys it more when he’s not the victim of the circumstance in question. “Well, what were you trying to…”

His voice fades out as his eyes catch on the passage of the letter written on the wall. Aziraphale’s eyes are wide as he looks at the glass display where the letter itself is for all to see. He opens his mouth, eyes very fixed on the letter so he doesn’t look at Crowley, silent for a long moment. Crowley doesn’t know what he can say in his own defense, maybe he should just get them somewhere else? He’s about to suggest looking at the ugly curtains again when Aziraphale finally speaks, quietly and almost too calmly.

“Oh, fuck.”


	2. Chapter 2

  


“Parcel for a Mr Fell?”

A small, bespectacled man in a peaked cap was stood at the door to the bookshop, a large brown paper parcel in his hands. Aziraphale bustled over, taking great enjoyment in making it clear to the few customers currently in the shop that he was about to be _very busy_ and therefore that there would be no more selling of books for a while, and that they should leave now and come back later. [1]

“You have to sign for it, sir,” the delivery man said. Aziraphale happily and loudly agreed that yes, he did have to sign for it, and of course he would, and thank you _ever_ so much for delivering these books to him.

The customers looked at each other, then took the hint and headed for the door. Aziraphale smiled and waved and wished them all well, and then shut the door on the whole lot of them and set the sign to ‘closed’.

He was rather enjoying running a bookshop.

The delivery, as expected, was for several of the new Charles Dickens novel, each copy beautifully bound with an illustrated title page and debossed lettering on the cover. Aziraphale looked carefully over them, ensuring they were each without blemish, then selected one for his own private collection and put it away safely. The others he began to clear space for in the front window, ready to craft a lovely little display to entice customers in. [2]

About halfway through this rather enjoyable task, another knock sounded at the door. The angel looked up, wondering for a moment if he hadn’t noticed a certain frie– acquain– no, _friend_ ’s arrival. The door remained shut, however, and that required him to go and open it himself.

A tiny, scruffy-looking child stood on the doorstep. She looked up at him, sharp eyes sizing him up carefully. “You Mr Fell?”

“Indeed,” the bookshop owner said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Got a message for ya.” The girl stuck out her hand, holding out a neat little envelope with very recognisable handwriting scratched on it.

Aziraphale took the note immediately, but the urchin’s hand stayed there, palm open.

“Would you rather money or bread? I have both at my disposal.”

“Then I’ll have both, if ya please, sir,” the child said cheekily.

The angel couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s sly grin. Crowley did always choose them well.

“Oh well, if you insist.” He turned as if to fetch something from out of sight, then summoned a freshly baked loaf and a shining coin with a quick miracle. “Be sure to share,” he said seriously as he handed both over. “You’ll need people you can stick together with.”

“Course, sir,” the urchin said. Then she turned and vanished back into the crowds of Soho, leaving the angel alone with his letter.

He locked the door again, then wandered over to his favourite chair to sit and read whatever Crowley had sent. It wasn’t long, so probably wouldn’t warrant a cup of tea. He could always indulge in one afterwards, though, if the need arose.

We need to talk, somewhere private. I have something to say. No one can know. I’ll let you know when and where tomorrow. Be safe. C.

There are certain phrases in human parlance which are meant metaphorically, or are at the very least significant exaggerations of physiological changes in the body. Sayings like ‘her heart skipped a beat’ or ‘his blood ran cold’ or ‘they stopped breathing’. In a celestial’s corporation, however – one such as that which the Principality Aziraphale was using at that very moment – these can be taken very literally.

When the angel remembered to blink and breathe and set his heart beating warmly again, he took a second to look away from the page in his hands, to adjust his bowtie at his suddenly very constricted neck, to clear his mind for a moment before coming back to those words and the layers of meaning hidden beneath them.

_Talk. Private. Safe. No one can know._

Aziraphale had the horrible, wonderful, _terrifying_ impression he knew exactly what Crowley was referring to.

He took a slow, shaky breath. Then he got up and went to make himself that cup of tea.

Thinking was a common enough pastime for the angel. Usually it was about books, about the stories humans created and wrote down, about the histories he’d lived through and the ones they’d recorded. Sometimes it was about miracles, and Heaven, and the assignments he was given to bestow on humanity. Often – though he wouldn’t admit that to anyone – it was about Crowley.

He took his favourite mug back to his favourite chair to do exactly that.

There were certain subjects he never went near. He didn’t like to consider certain uncomfortable actions (or inactions) of his own – the Flood was rarely entertained, for example. He didn’t like to dwell on what actually did come _after_ for the humans he lived among. And he never allowed himself to wonder what would have happened to humanity if Eve _hadn’t_ eaten the apple.

Several of these subjects – most of them, really, perhaps even all, if you thought about it – circled back round to Crowley. Aziraphale refused to let himself think too much about the demon, and yet, increasingly often now, he found himself thinking about him.

And now, it seemed, Crowley had also been thinking about _him_.

_I have something to say. No one can know._

Aziraphale ordinarily wouldn’t even let himself _think_ the words he thought Crowley was hiding beneath the surface here. But what else could it be? Their mere acquaintance with one another was dangerous, tantamount to treason, and yet it happened commonly enough that most conversations were at least more casual than secret meetings at undisclosed times and places. This had to be something important. Something only Aziraphale could know about.

The angel took another shaky breath. He knew what it was Crowley wanted to say. And he knew that he had to be ready with a response.

He stood, belatedly noticing that night had fallen, and flicked on the bookshop lights with a thought. He moved across to his writing desk, taking care to still his shaking hands. He sat, put on his reading spectacles, and took up a quill in one hand, drawing a page towards himself with the other.

His personal stationery was beautifully printed, of the highest quality, and incredibly expensive. Alas, it was also highly identifiable. Aziraphale sighed, pushed it away again, clicked his fingers, and stared down at the new blank sheet before him.

_Right then. Here we go._

The quill hovered over the page for a moment, unsure how to begin.

Not _Crowley_ , of course. He couldn’t use their names. He couldn’t even sign it ‘Angel’, or that would be too incriminating if Heaven or Hell were ever to find it. No, it must be subtle, then, but with a meaning Crowley would recognise immediately on sight. Not names, more... terms of endearment.

Aziraphale knew what to put at once.

Language was a particular interest of Aziraphale’s. What with having devoted an entire shop to the pleasures of the written word, and having lived through times and peoples and cultures which had spoken innumerable languages, he also considered himself rather an expert. Somehow, though, there were those times when words escaped him, or fumbled themselves in his mouth, or even came out quite unbidden. One such in the latter category seemed to have attached itself to Crowley, and the number of times it had escaped the angel’s lips had necessitated adopting it into his everyday vernacular as an excuse for assigning it _far_ too often to a demon.

He had so far, however, managed to avoid using the word in its superlative form. Which, he hoped, would give it all the more impact on its employment now.

My Dearest One, he wrote in his careful handwriting.

Aziraphale allowed himself to enjoy the sweeping feeling of the words finding themselves on the page, pouring a little emotion out into every neat stroke of the pen. There was a little hope in the ‘My’, a little honesty in the ‘One’, and rather a lot of pure love in the ‘Dearest’. Aziraphale had an inkling that perhaps demons couldn’t sense emotions in the same way angels could, but he hoped it might help anyway. Anything to show Crowley how much he truly meant to Aziraphale.

After that, he wasn’t sure where to go with it.

The empty space below his mighty opening statement was incredibly intimidating. Perhaps he should reconsider? Almost six thousand years was rather a lot to expect to squeeze into the remarkably flimsy medium of paper, this delicate, impermanent thing. Perhaps it was impossible. Perhaps he should give up now, before he wrote something ridiculous, before he got something wrong, before he ruined everything. Words have power, after all. A wrong stroke could separate them for decades to come. There was a lot riding on him getting these particular words right.

Aziraphale sat back. He took a deep breath, and tried to calm the pace of the unnecessary beating in his chest. _Breathe._

No, he was not going to give up now. Crowley deserved to know, deserved to hear it from Aziraphale, in the best words he could come up with, even if they weren’t perfect. And he had time – all night, at the very least, if not all week. He could get this right. Crowley deserved to know that there was thought put into these words, that they were important, considered, intentional. Yes, he _had_ to write this letter. And so he would.

After a cup of tea.

The angel stood, retreating from his writing desk to pace fretfully in the back room while the kettle boiled. What should he say? How should he say it? Would it be better to simply state what he thought they should do, or leave that conversation for later, once Crowley had had time to digest the news? Should he apologise for taking too long? Should he apologise for writing at all?

The pitch of this thoughts climbed as his unnecessary, far-too-human stomach churned, the pent-up energy roiling and twisting around and through each other, building and breaking and boiling, boiling, boiling –

It took Aziraphale a moment to realise the piercing whistle in his ears was the kettle calling out that it was done.

He brewed the tea, the rhythm of the ritual soothing his nerves far more than twiddling his thumbs did. The smell of the leaves filled the steamy air, softly familiar. The angel closed his eyes and inhaled, holding that calming scent of Earthly delight in his chest for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, he was ready.

This letter is far too long overdue, he began. Not an apology as such, but akin to one. Perhaps Crowley would take issue with an angel asking him for forgiveness, but this was simply a statement. One that could be understood without risk of offence. At least, he hoped so. Aziraphale tried to stop overthinking it all, and ploughed on.

I have considered writing something of the sort many a time throughout our long Acquaintance, but too often have I baulked at the Consequences and thus I have been too cowardly to follow through on my plans. This is, therefore, not the first letter of this kind I have composed to you; only the first to have been committed to the dreadfully Tangible medium of paper and ink.

Once he was in the motion of it, the words flowing smoothly from mind to quill, shaping themselves beautifully on the page almost as quickly as he thought of them, it was easy. Aziraphale poured his heart out, and the letter wrote itself.

When he next looked up, the night was no longer midnight-dark. There was still a little while until sunrise, and plenty more time after that until Crowley was likely to call on him. But the stillness of the witching hour had gone, and the earliest of London’s workers were now beginning to stir outside.

Aziraphale looked down at the letter in front of him, fully-formed. He read it back to himself, considering the words carefully. He’d only made one mistake, a single word neatly crossed out and replaced, and the intention of the change was such that the error wasn’t worth miracling away. Crowley would understand. He always did.

The angel collected the pages and folded them, slipping his epistle into a simple, unmarked envelope, and then tucking the completed letter securely into his breast pocket for safekeeping.

Now, he only had to wait.

* * *

“I was hoping he’d write another book about Barnaby Rudge.”

“I’m afraid you’re pretty much alone in that. But the new one is quite exciting. Set in Revolutionary France!”

Mrs Alexandrina didn’t seem impressed. She continued her previous train of thought, eyes glazing over wistfully. “ _Barnaby Rudge and the Castle of Horrors_! _Barnaby Rudge Goes to Mystery Island_! _Barnaby Rudge and the Wizard’s Nose_!”

Aziraphale was beginning to reach the end of his very long tether on this occasion. Sometimes Mrs Alexandrina could be rather more than even he was able to deal with. “Perhaps you could write to Mr Dickens, and ask him to oblige?” he offered helpfully.

Mrs Alexandrina opened her mouth as if to argue that _he_ should do it, being a reputed bookshop owner and all, but thankfully at that moment the bell above the shop door rang, and the arrival of a street urchin diverted both their attentions (for apparently opposing reasons).

“Mr Fell?” the boy asked loudly, looking straight at Aziraphale. The angel stepped forward eagerly, nodding. “I got a message for you.”

The note was even shorter this time, and without an envelope. He read it in a heartbeat.

The usual place. C.

Aziraphale looked up. “We’re closed. You have to go away now.”

The few first-time customers in the shop looked a little put out about this pronouncement, but they turned and headed for the door all the same. Aziraphale had to employ a particularly steely glare (and a small lie about the possible existence of a copy of _Barnaby Rudge Falls on Hard Times_ at a different bookshop around the corner) to get Mrs Alexandrina to move, but eventually she did.

The angel looked back at the urchin. “Do you know what I have here?” he asked, holding out his hand.

“A ha’penny, sir,” the boy said, looking wary.

Aziraphale wiggled excitedly, then slid the coin out of view, vanishing it from the child’s sight by human means alone, and reappearing it behind the boy’s own ear. The urchin seemed impressed by this feat, and happily took the coin when offered it. The angel ensured he would find it had duplicated itself by the time he needed it for anything. Then he stepped out of the bookshop door, shut it behind himself, and headed off in the direction of St James’s Park.

* * *

Crowley was already there when he arrived. The angel approached slowly, casually, and tried his best to make it appear that he paused where he did quite by chance. His heart was (metaphorically this time) in his throat.

He needed a reason for pausing here, by the water, next to this perfect stranger. So he took his hat off – very casually – and manifested some breadcrumbs inside it to throw to the ducks. It was always best for him to have something to do with his hands in moments like this, after all. It helped stop him giving anything away.

The demon launched into conversation almost immediately. “Look, I’ve been thinking. What if it all goes wrong?”

Aziraphale restrained himself from betraying any reaction. They were strangers meeting by happenstance, after all. Or rather, a couple of spies from opposite sides, meeting in the safety of a busy public space. And clearly, this was a conversation that Crowley needed to frame like that. As one between members of opposing forces, albeit with a long history of business arrangements despite that division; as ones already in a dangerous situation, and with a difficult task ahead of them if this was the path they were going down.

Clearly Crowley felt the need to highlight the danger they were in before sharing this terrible truth, because the heightened awareness of their current situation would be necessary to him feeling safe in divulging his secret. An interesting paradox, but an understandable one.

The letter felt like it was burning a hole in Aziraphale’s breast pocket.

“We have a lot in common, you and me,” the demon continued.

Oh, but this was the _old_ dance. “I don’t know. We may have both started off as angels, but _you_ are Fallen.” _And yet you called, and I came. What a funny old world this is, eh?_

“I didn’t really Fall. I just, you know... sauntered vaguely downwards.” It was an interesting turn of phrase, but Aziraphale wasn’t given time to think it over. Crowley pivoted to his next thought without even a breath in between, as if it was part of the same sentence. “I need a favour.”

Such an old, _old_ dance. How long had they been doing this one now? They knew the steps by heart. “We already have the agreement, Crowley. Stay out of each other’s way. Lend a hand when needed.” Perhaps after this, after everything was sorted, after they’d both said what they’d needed to say, they might wander down to Simpson’s in the Strand – or perhaps Rules in Covent Garden? He rather thought they might each need something sweet.

“This is something else.” The humans were doing some wonderful things with fruits at the moment. A dessert or two to share perhaps? Wouldn’t that be romantic? “For if it all goes pear-shaped.”

_Such a ridiculous turn of phrase. Why should ‘pear’ mean ‘bad’?_ “I like pears.”

“If it all goes _wrong_. I want insurance.”

That... wasn’t what Aziraphale had expected him to say. The angel tipped out the last of the breadcrumbs and returned his hat to his head, asking Crowley to elaborate as he did so.

“I wrote it down. Walls have ears.”

Oh, how delightful! Perhaps they were even more on the same page than Aziraphale had thought before – Crowley had _written it down_ , just as he himself had. Some things just felt more _real_ on paper, after all. Some things were better conveyed, cut right to the heart of it, when they were physical, tangible things, not such imperfect and ephemeral things as spoken words.

_And Crowley knows how much I love the bookshop,_ Aziraphale thought, as he took the note the demon held out to him. _He knows how much the written word means to me, he knows that is the simplest, most direct route to my understanding. He knows me so –_

No. No. NO.

It took every fibre of Aziraphale’s self-control not to react as strongly as he felt. “Out of the question.”

“Why not?”

How could he even ask that? How could he not realise what that would take, what that would _mean_?

“It would _destroy_ you. I’m not bringing you a suicide pill, Crowley.” He handed the note back, not daring to even consider the idea for a moment longer than he had to.

“That’s not what I want it for, just insurance.”

Crowley pushed the little slip of paper back towards the angel, open this time, and Aziraphale was once again confronted by those two horrific little words there. _Holy water._

This was not how today was supposed to go. This was not the sort of thing he’d expected to – How had he misunderstood so badly? Things were going so well, so _wonderfully_ well, and they’d never even come close to being discovered, not really. Not for decades. Why would he want this? Why would he ask _him_?

“I’m not an idiot, Crowley,” Aziraphale found himself saying. “Do you know what trouble I’d be in if...” – he couldn’t help glancing upwards, as if he expected to see God herself frowning down upon them – “if they knew I’d been... fraternising? It’s completely out of the question.”

Crowley looked at him then, and the change in posture made Aziraphale realise that he hadn’t yet, not for this entire conversation. The word that came was harsh and unexpectedly angry. “ _Fraternising?_ ”

“Well, whatever you wish to call it.” _That’s not the point, that’s so far from being the point._ “I do not think there is any point in discussing it further.”

“I have lots of other people to _fraternise_ with, angel.”

“Oh, of course you do.” Aziraphale could feel the colour coming into his cheeks, a red-hot blush building from an entirely different emotion than the one he might have earlier assumed he’d be feeling at the moment. He turned to leave.

“I don’t need you.”

Oh. That cut deep. That was... that was the _opposite_ of what he’d expected from today.

Aziraphale turned back to the demon, and snapped at him. “Well, and the feeling is mutual! Obviously.”

He realised the piece of paper was still in his hand, so he threw it hard at the water, something for the lake to seep into and the ducks to swallow. It could rot there, for all he cared. There was no way, in Heaven, Hell, or anywhere in between, that Aziraphale was agreeing to the demand.

The paper caught the air, floating down far more gracefully than it should have. Like a feather, gliding softly downwards. Sauntering, one might say.

He left the park, angry and hurt. The march back to the bookshop did nothing to assuage his fury, and once inside he couldn’t bear to even think of the joy with which he’d headed to that meeting.

He couldn’t look at the letter in his pocket again, so he banished it with a click of his fingers – to a drawer in his writing desk, perhaps, or tucked into a copy of that blasted new Dickens book for some human to carry off and throw away, or just vanished into the ether so it could never again see the light of day.

Yes, that was clearly where it belonged. Somewhere dark and empty and lonely, where no one would ever need to know that it existed.

He didn’t see Crowley again for almost eighty years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Aziraphale had not quite yet reached the conclusion that customers in his bookshop should _never_ come back, but that belief was only a couple of decades away. The novelty of owning a _real shop_ had not yet worn off, and to be a _real shop_ you needed customers, so why would he shoo them away? He only did that when he was _really_ fed up with them. Like now, for example, because Mrs Alexandrina had just turned up and was looking ready for a quarrel, and he didn’t wish to deal with that kind of negativity right now, thank you very much. But she could come back another time, when he was more in the spirit for a duel of wits; for the moment, Aziraphale was happy to have his customers return an indefinite number of times before giving up, because that was part of what made the whole thing fun. [return to text]
> 
> 2 _These_ were the books they could buy, so these were the ones on display. Aziraphale had not yet realised, apparently, that creating a display in a shop window suggested that _all_ items in said shop were available for sale. That, to him, was a ridiculous leap of logic that the more arrogant humans tended to make, and they were quickly advised to the contrary. [return to text]


End file.
